This is the third episode of our podcast series, “The Podcast for Social Research.” This week we talk a bit about our first class, a bit more about Kamila Shamsie’s essay “The Storytellers of Empire,” and quite a lot about Evgeny Morozov’s essay “The Death of the Cyberflaneur,” Walter Benjamin, the Internet, subjectivity and a heck of a lot in between. For more information on the podcast series, please see the Introduction and Notations to Episode 1. As with last time, please see our Notations section after the jump for some references, time stamps and topics. Enjoy!

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Technical Details: Recorded on a Samson CO1U into an msi PC running the beta version of the freeware program Audacity 1.3.13 while consuming enjoyable, yet moderate, amounts of Buffalo Trace bourbon, Full Sail Session Lager, Coke Zero, and good old-fashioned New York City tap water.

3 Comments to Episode 3 of the Podcast for Social Research: Introduction and Notations

I agree with Christine that we can’t just recruit dead thinkers into whatever nowadays position we hold…but it doesn’t seem true, what she says about Walter Benjamin, that we can’t know what he would think about the internet, because we only have his thoughts on particular other forms of media technology (the newspaper, film).

Ajay is right: what Benjamin would say is “we must approach the internet dialectically, i.e. in terms of its potential functional transformation for the class struggle.”

This is the argument of the essay “The Author as Producer,” and *however that might look* when applied to the internet, it wouldn’t be strictly negative/condemnatory.

Christine made an excellent point thought about precisely this question in our conversation, namely that all technologies are not equal. I would add that this is one of the reasons that Critical Theory takes a perhaps even darker turn post WWII. For some the technology of the death camp and for others the technology of the atom bomb represent a moment in which in fact dialectics reach a kind of negative first principle. There is no dialectic of the atom bomb. Perhaps there could be of nuclear technology as a whole. But all of the “rational” reasons one could make for the atom bomb (either the complete embrace of war to end war, or of mutually assured destruction, etc.) represent a perfect example of what Adorno and Horkheimer described in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Reason overcoming reason (and reasoners.) The irrational victory of Reason.

Now, I would quibble (as I did in our conversation!) about whether the internet and social media have achieved atom bomb status! On those technologies, I feel personally that we can hold on to some of Benjamin’s messianic possibilities in those cases. But Christine’s corrective was merely to point out that distinctions can (and must) be made.

I am really glad you brought up “The Author as Producer” as you are right its crucial to this conversation and raises a lot of questions in regard to ‘flanerie’, Benjamin’s normative position on writing and especially his critique of “empathy” (some of the best flaneurs produce “empathetic” writing which actually reflects a kind of extreme narcissism, the potential author (and subsequent reader) say something like, ‘now that i’ve observed, imagined and depicted your suffering and felt bad about it, i don’t actually have to do anything about it.’ the act of of ‘empathisizing’ alone is largely meaningless, it just reminds the empathizer (is that even a word) of how good of a person they are…something along those lines.)
- Ajay